But the purpose of the stop was not enforcement of the vehicle code.

"When there is not probable cause to believe that a driver is violating any one of the multitude of applicable traffic and equipment regulations 24 -- or other articulable basis amounting to reasonable suspicion that the driver is unlicensed or his vehicle unregistered -- we cannot conceive of any legitimate basis upon which a patrolman could decide that stopping a particular driver for a spot check would be more productive than stopping any other driver." Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 661, 99 S. Ct. 1391, 1400 (1979)

In California, as I suspect in most states, the driver is required to produce a license and registration when being pulled over for a traffic stop.

California Vehicle Code 12951(b) states: "The driver of a motor vehicle shall present his or her license for examination upon demand of a peace officer enforcing the provisions of this code."

Since the vehicle was not involved, the stop would not require a license to of produced. Of course, the cop would lie and make up a reason.

You are conflating a consensual encounter with a detention.

It's really the same problem that we see with quantum physics -- the subject matter is esoteric enough that common sense can't be used to determine whether what you're listening to is really advanced theory or utter BS (or some combination of the two); they both sound the same, and the situation isn't helped by the presence of large numbers of people who think they know what they are talking about but don't. :/

No, when they decide not to show up or release someone that they should have detained.

Read Terry v. Ohio | 392 U.S. 1 (1968) and Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada (2004) 542 U.S. 177

I have reported crimes, but LAPD refused to make arrests.
I had a cop argue with me and tell me that I was not authorized to have an arrest made because I was a building manager. I had to explain real property law to him.

In many states, there is no requirement to show ID unless arrested. In other cases, there still has to be reasonable suspicion (the Terry standard).

Detaining someone for 1 second without reasonable suspicion violates the 4th amendment. Pulling someone over is not a consentual encounter, but the officer is probably trained to turn it into one. Extending the stop is unconstitutional. See Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348, 135 S. Ct. 1609, 191 L. Ed. 2d 492 (2015),. I suspect that even a diminimus extension would be unconstitutional. So, a false report could be argued a civil wrong, even when causing a deminimus delay.

The "might be armed?" might not be a crime. The defense would argue that there is a possibility and argue that it might not meet the standard of reasonable doubt. But in a civil case, it could meet the preponderance of the evidence.

How much would you like to bet that Flock's lawyers told them what exactly to say when calling the police?

I think the distinction they are making is between technology that kills people, and technology that entertains people. If someone fitted actual weapons to a Doom engine, they'd probably object.

Let's make the hopeful assumption that the superintelligent AIs will not "go rogue" in any way, but will correctly try to carry out their tasks as assigned by the people who designed and trained them.

Pretty much every major nation has military AIs, at this point. So the Chinese AIs are working hard on how to defeat the Americans, and the American AIs are working hard on how to defeat the Russians, and so on. In the final analysis, no matter where you live, there is probably an AI that has been explicitly tasked by its operators with figuring out the most effective ways to do you in. Not because they've "gone wrong", but because they're working as intended.

The size of the universe is increasing...
but the rate at which it is increasing is decreasing...
but the rate at which the rate is decreasing is increasing...
but the rate at which the rate of the rate is increasing is decreasing...
but the rate at which the rate of the rate of the rate is decreasing in increasing...
[... and so on, ad infinitum...]

People commonly overestimate the possibility of "all humans dying", and simultaneously underestimate the possibility of "billions of humans dying".

People are like cockroaches that way; a disaster could wipe out 99% of us, and there would still be millions of us left to repopulate afterwards. To truly wipe out all humans would take something more severe than the asteroid that did for the dinosaurs.

Whoever set up its reward function, really. Could be any of the above. The technology doesn't care, it only follows its algorithm.

I'm not. $2K is an eye-watering amount to spend on a cell phone, even in 2026, and especially on a design that seems almost guaranteed to start wearing a vertical line into the display at the folding-point over time. I expect a number of Slashdot articles about unhappy Duo users demanding redress over that issue, even if everything else works as advertised.

Maybe in a better economy, people would splurge on something like this, but I don't think that's the zeitgest this season.

n/t